After all, this cross-party group was supported by Unilever chairman Niall Fitzgerald, BP chairman Peter Sutherland, Virgin boss Richard Branson and the cream of the British business community.

Unsurprisingly, they were joined by Peter Mandelson, former Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath, the Foreign Office, the CBI, the TUC and most leading City economists.

Reporting the 'Britain in Europe' campaign at the time, I remember with what gusto all these eminent figures ridiculed and sneered at the embattled Tory leader William Hague, who was leading the opposition and going round Britain in a battle bus calling on voters to 'save the pound'.

Today, a decade on, I believe that Blair (who dismissed William Hague as 'shrill'), Heseltine and the other promoters of 'Britain in Europe' owe the public a huge, collective apology. Had Britain joined the euro, our economy would have been shattered.

As for William Hague, history has proved him right.

The economic statistics reveal the stark truth. Since 2001, the British economy - even taking into account the past 12 months of financial crisis - has grown much faster than the eurozone countries and remained comparatively more stable than most.

These facts firmly disprove Mandelson's mendacious warning of the catastrophic consequences if Britain did not adopt the euro.

'The price,' he said, 'we would pay in lost investment and trade and jobs in Britain would be incalculable.'

He also warned: 'As long as we are outside the euro, there is little we can do to protect industry against destabilising swings in the value of sterling.'

Neil Kinnock: 'Staying out of the euro would damage this country'

Ken Clarke spoke in a similar misguided vein, claiming: 'Britain's economy will be damaged if we stay out too long.'

Meanwhile, Labour minister Peter Hain warned: 'I doubt that in the end it is possible to run a sort of parallel currency economy.'

And that great economic genius Neil Kinnock told the British public that staying out of the euro would damage this country's 'investment in public services and infrastructure'.

Not wishing to be left out of this cross-party consensus, the LibDems' Chris Huhne said failure to join the euro would lead to a collapse of inward investment and mocked eurosceptics who warned that the Irish economy would overheat once it joined the euro because of low interest rates.

As we now know, Huhne and his fellow euro-fanatics were proved to be completely and utterly wrong.

The Irish economy did overheat and it has since collapsed - all thanks to the Dublin government ditching the punt and signing up to the euro.

As part of the eurozone, the Irish government is locked into this economic mess and has no freedom to escape.

The same story can be told in many countries that now use the euro as their currency. Both Portugal and Spain ( where unemployment is approaching a worrying 20 per cent) now face social disintegration as well as economic disaster.

If Britain had joined the euro, as that grand cross-party coalition of Blair, Heseltine & co urged, we would now be facing the same plight.

But by maintaining our own monetary sovereignty, we have been able to head off the danger of economic depression using a three-pronged strategy of reducing interest rates, devaluing sterling and introducing the so-called quantitative easing programme of printing extra money.

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And the brutal truth is that we would have been able to take none of these measures if we had been part of the eurozone, with our economic policy set for us by the European Central Bank.

Even supporters of the euro are grudgingly beginning to recognise the truth. This week, LibDem economic spokesman Vince Cable acknowledged how much the pound's recent devaluation has done to help British manufacturers and exporters.

How different it would have been for these businessmen and women if Britain was a member of the euro as Vince Cable and his Lib-Dems want.

Of course it is too much to expect that Blair, Heseltine, Clarke, Mandelson and Kennedy and the rest of the pro- euro zealots will admit they got it wrong. But there's no harm in praising those politicians who got it right.

Let's not forget it was that muchmaligned Conservative Prime Minister John Major who negotiated Britain's opt- out in Maastricht 19 years ago and how he was abused for his 'little Englandism'.

Without Major's foresight and courage, we would now have no control over our economy. Let's not also forget the fortitude shown by William Hague during his miserable years as leader of the Tory Opposition.

History has shown that, for all his unpopularity, he was right over this profoundly important issue and that Tony Blair was wrong.

Finally, it's only fair to praise Gordon Brown. Curiously, he attended that 'Britain in Europe' launch ten years ago - but only under great duress. Secretly, he hated the euro project and as Chancellor had successfully manoeuvred behind the scenes against it.

When the history books are finally written, they will probably ignore his time as Prime Minister and judge that Gordon Brown's greatest achievement was to stop that mad, Gadarene rush to take us into the euro.

Time to stop sitting on the fence, Mr Johnson

British Home Secretary Alan Johnson has failed to avert the postal strikes

There is only one man who can now save that wonderful institution, the Royal Mail, from destruction in next week's national post strike. He is the Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who worked as a postman for 18 years and is a former leader of the Communication Workers Union.

Johnson has the authority to urge postal workers to abandon their crazed course of action and see sense.

Yet throughout this increasingly bitter industrial dispute, he has kept his own counsel. Again and again he has failed to come to the aid of his embattled Cabinet colleague Peter Mandelson as he tries to head off the crisis.

The few times that Johnson has been pressed on the issue in public, such as on BBC1's Question Time on Thursday night, he has sat firmly on the fence and spoken feebly of the need for management and unions to get together.

It was interesting that he did not warn the post workers - as Mandelson has done repeatedly - that they are committing 'suicide' if they go on strike.

He knows that he has a real chance of winning thanks to his massive trade union support and he realises that he must not antagonise this by giving honest - yet unpopular - advice to the postal workers.

Such tactics are pathetic. Six months ago, Johnson looked the inevitable successor to Brown, but now his cowardly behaviour over the threatened post strike shows that he has not got what it takes.